The Ginger Cat Mystery (18 page)

“I looked at the clock and it was just after one.”

“It would probably be Mr. Cornell,” suggested Vereker.

“I was almost certain it was at first, but I know Miss Stella's footsteps and then thought it was her. I listened particular to satisfy myself but couldn't be certain.”

“Had she gone to bed before that?” asked Vereker.

“Oh, yes, I heard her come upstairs about eleven o'clock. I spoke to her about it in the morning, but she said I'd made a mistake because she was sound asleep at that time. Then I said it must have been Mr. Cornell, but she said Mr. Cornell was also in bed and that I must have been dreaming.”

“Do you think you made a mistake, Miss Lister?”

“It's quite possible, sir. I was in such pain I wasn't heeding overmuch, but later on when I was talking to Mr. Cornell, he said he'd got up to let Misty, the cat, in. Then I remembered I'd heard the back door opened and closed and never thought about the thing any more.”

“You're certain that somebody was about at that hour, anyway,” commented Vereker.

“As certain as one can be, sir.”

“Of course Miss Stella was terribly upset next morning when she heard the news of her cousin's death?”

“Not so upset as her father. Miss Stella went about her work as usual though she was as white as a sheet, but Mr. Cornell looked as if he was half-dead.”

“He took it to heart more, I suppose.”

“No, I don't think that. Miss Stella was Mr. Frank's sweetheart until this Miss Mayo vamped him. But she's terribly strong-willed and wasn't going to show she was upset.”

“They were very fond of one another, so I hear, but their parents wouldn't let them walk out,” remarked Vereker.

“They used to walk out in spite of their parents, if you ask me, and so would I if it was me who was in love,” said Mary defiantly.

“They met secretly in the Manor garden, I believe.”

“Yes, and as you know all about it I may as well tell you they used to sit together in the haunted room when it was wet.”

“That took some pluck,” said Vereker encouragingly. “Would you risk sitting in a haunted room with your young man, Miss Lister?”

“Of course I would, because the room was never haunted,” replied Mary firmly.

“What about the young lady who wears her wedding dress and plays the piano?” asked Vereker.

At these words Miss Lister burst into merry laughter. “So you, too, have heard that story?” she asked with a superior air.

“Yes and I believe it. I know a lot about haunted houses.”

“You wouldn't believe in that one if you knew as much as I do,” remarked Miss Lister, hinting darkly.

“It depends on what you know, but I've heard of ghosts walking about in wedding dresses. They were usually murdered on the eve of their weddings.”

“It wasn't a wedding dress at all,” said Mary contemptuously. “It was a muslin frock.”

“Then you've seen the ghost?” asked Vereker eagerly.

“Well, yes and no, but are you going to put all this in the papers?”

“I'll only put in what you want me to put, and as I shall be paid for the ghost story, I'll share what I get with you. I may get a couple of guineas for a good ghost story.”

“It's not much of a ghost story,” said Mary despondently, “because the ghost was Miss Stella. She had gone to meet Mr. Frank in the music room and had just sat down at the piano when Mrs. Cornell came in. Miss Stella began to play the piano and Mrs. Cornell screamed and ran out of the room.”

“Didn't she see it was Miss Cornell?” asked Vereker, amused at this tame laying of the Manor spectre.

“No; it was dark. Miss Stella told her all about it some days afterwards and as they are great friends they had a good laugh and kept it all to themselves. Miss Stella told me on the quiet, so you mustn't put that in the papers.”

“Never mind, I'll sell the story all right and I'll give you your guinea now,” said Vereker, “but tell me, Miss Lister, how did Miss Stella get into the music room?”

“By the door from the garden, of course. How d' you think?”

“Yes, but how did she get hold of the keys? The doors are always kept locked.”

“But we've always had a set of keys to the music room in the bungalow. They used to lie on Mr. Cornell's desk, but they haven't been there for some days.”

“They were there when you last dusted the desk, I suppose?”

“Mr. Cornell never let me dust his desk, but I saw them there only last week when I put a bowl of flowers on his desk.”

“You're quite certain about that, Miss Lister?”

“Perfectly certain, sir. There are two keys tied together with a piece of string and there's a tab on the string with ‘music room' printed as large as life on it. But may I ask why you're anxious about those keys?”

“If I'd known Mr. Cornell had them, I'd have borrowed them from him, but I was led to understand that they'd been lost. Now I know there's no ghost in a wedding dress haunting the music room, I shan't trouble any more about them. I'm rather sorry in a way because if I'd seen the ghost I'd have got a lot more for my story from a newspaper.”

“Can't you tell them you've seen one?” asked Mary helpfully with an eye to a larger share of profits.

“Impossible, Newspapers never print anything but the truth and if I told a whacker they might find out and get me into trouble. In any case I'll get a couple of guineas and I'll give you your share now.”

Vereker produced his note-case and handed Mary a pound note.

“Beg pardon, sir, but you said guineas,” she commented as she picked up the note.

“Of course, of course, I was forgetting,” laughed Vereker handing her the odd shilling. “And, Miss Lister, don't tell anyone about our story. We must keep that a dead secret.”

“Is it a Sunday paper, sir?”

“No, but why do you ask?”

“If they wanted my photo, I might let them have one.”

“They never publish photos, Miss Lister, so it wouldn't be of any use to me. I've got to hunt round for more stories, so I think I'll make a move.”

“If you want to know anything else, sir, I'm always at home on Wednesday afternoon and you'd better come here if you want to see me.”

“Thanks. I won't forget, Miss Lister,” said Vereker and after another careful injunction as to secrecy took his departure.

The front door of the cottage had just closed behind him and he was about to cross the village green when a motor-cycle, coming along the road bordering the green, sounded its horn and slowing down pulled up just behind him.

“Good afternoon,” said a female voice as the rider, whom in the distance he had taken to be a bareheaded youth in jumper and grey flannels, got off the cycle and approached him, pushing her heavy machine slowly beside her.

“Good afternoon,” returned Vereker, raising his hat, “I simply didn't recognise you, Miss Cornell.”

“I suppose these togs rather misled you,” remarked Miss Cornell indicating her grey flannel trousers. “I wear them for gardening and they're much handier for a motor-bike than skirts. I was busy in the garden after lunch and then I suddenly remembered I wanted to see Mary Lister, our maid, so I jumped on my machine and came down as I was. It's her half-day off. Did I see you come out of the Listers' cottage or was it the post office?”

“It was the Listers' cottage,” replied Vereker casually, but with his eyes on Miss Cornell's face.

“Oh!” she remarked and a curious flash of uncertainty invaded her eye. “I simply wondered. I couldn't see very well as I was coming up parallel with the frontage of the buildings on this side of the green.”

“I heard that Lister was a carrier, in fact the only carrier in the village,” said Vereker, hoping that his suggestion would be taken and save him the necessity for a misleading explanation.

“Yes, he's our Carter Paterson and a most obliging man,” replied Miss Cornell in a satisfied tone.

“Unfortunately he's out on his round,” continued Vereker, pleased that his ruse had succeeded, “but I'll call again this evening. My business is not very pressing.”

“Are you returning to London, Mr. Vereker?” she asked, looking up at him quickly.

“No; I shall wait until the adjourned inquest is over. As far as I can see it'll be the usual open verdict. We've made little headway in the investigation and the case will probably be added to the long list of unsolved mysteries.”

“Ah!” said Miss Cornell and after a few moments' silence continued, “I'm glad you called at the bungalow this morning. You've made a great impression on father and he's looking forward eagerly to your next visit. But I must catch Mary Lister before she goes out.”

“Do you think I'd find Mr. Carstairs at the Manor if I called this afternoon? I was on the point of making my way up there now,” asked Vereker.

“Almost certain. I saw him this morning and he said he was going to be in all afternoon as Mrs. Cornell has gone to see her solicitors about some probate business.”

Thanking her, Vereker turned and walked leisurely across the green on to the main road running through the village and leading past Marston Manor. As he walked slowly along in the warm autumn sunshine, his thoughts were busy about the young woman he had just left. As he remembered her slim girlish figure in jumper and grey flannels, her pale olive-coloured skin, luminous dark eyes and her beautifully-shaped head with its shining black hair, he had to admit to himself that she was a very prepossessing creature. The hint of self-assured modernity suggested by her boyish garb was belied by her grave, thoughtful face and quiet, almost shy, manner. Susceptible to beauty in all its forms and especially in its most potent form, he found it extremely difficult to keep an open mind about her connection with the terrible tragedy which formed the subject of his investigation. He warned himself that he must be utterly dispassionate in his attitude and harden his heart against the warm appeal of feminine beauty which was so apt to bias his judgment. It was the cardinal weakness of the artist against which he had to be alertly on guard. From all the facts in his possession she was as likely a person to have fired the shot as anyone else. Her motive, too, was one of the strongest: the anger of a discarded woman who, faithful to her lover during the most romantic years of her life, suddenly discovers that she has been irrevocably supplanted by another. If she had shot her lover there was something in the injustice of her treatment which would partially condone her act even in minds firmly chained to the inviolability and sanctity of the law. At the bar of English justice, probably the most impartial and logical in the world in its decisions, she might be condemned and yet evade the legal death penalty by the appeal of her cruel position to the emotional sympathy of a people on the whole staunchly sentimental. Vereker put this aspect to himself and resolved not to allow any sentiment whatever to deflect him from the hard canons of the profession to which he had so often given his time and devoted services. He recapitulated all the factors which pointed to Stella Cornell as the likely culprit. The powerful motive; her possible access to the music room keys even if the duplicate set was not already in her possession; her knowledge of the existence of an automatic pistol in the drawer of a bureau in the music room; her ability to secure a secret appointment with her cousin at such an hour possibly with the idea of making a last appeal to his better nature; her thorough acquaintance with the house and grounds which would render her entry and departure safe from observation and as free from any chance encounter as it was possible to anticipate. That she and her cousin had made the music room a secret trysting place during inclement weather, even Inspector Heather had shrewdly hinted at, and Mary Lister, the Cornells' maid, had just confirmed. Against these arguments and apart from the fact that a firearm has seldom been used by woman in acts of revenge or even in self-defence, there was the young woman's amazing self-assurance and complete composure after the crime. In discussing the subject with a detective she had been supremely cool. She had been absolutely frank in the admission of her love for the deceased and of her chagrin at her deposition from the status of a secretly betrothed by his open engagement to another. She had denied all knowledge of the duplicate keys to the music room with the downright air of one speaking the truth. He clearly remembered her facial expression when he had asked her if she knew what had become of them and the direct gaze of her eyes when she had replied to him, “Not the slightest. Crawley ought to know where they are.” If she had lied, Stella Cornell must be an actress of the first order, thought Vereker, and in that case he must be infinitely wary in dealing with her. He instinctively felt that underneath her assumed trustfulness of him—in other words the natural attitude of an innocent person—she was secretly convinced that he suspected her. A momentary unsteadiness in the eye, born and gone in a flash, an almost imperceptible twitch of the short upper lip, had been clear indications to his super-sensitive awareness. Her discovery that he had called at the Listers' home and her uncertainty as to the purpose of that call had, in their meeting of only ten minutes ago, brought that nervous questioning glance into her eye. Perhaps a guilty conscience had suggested to her that his visit to the Listers' cottage might be to interrogate the maid, and that same guilty conscience had temporarily blinded her to the fact that he might have wanted to see Lister on the latter's ordinary business of a carrier. He had most clearly detected the swift note of relief in her voice when the latter possibility had been deftly suggested to her and readily accepted. Silently but surely in Vereker's mind was forming a grave suspicion that Stella Cornell, if not the guilty principal, had some connection with or knowledge of the crime and its perpetrator which she was anxious to conceal from the world. He was loth to entertain this suspicion against such a beautiful and seemingly good young woman, and in her presence he was almost inclined to reproach himself for a cynicism that bordered on the sordid. Wrapped in these thoughts, he had nearly reached the Manor gates when the rapid explosions of a motor-cycle's engine some distance behind him made him take to the safety of the footpath. In doing so he glanced back and at once recognized the approaching rider as Miss Cornell. Something in the hatless head with its raven hair fluttering in the wind, something in the light grey flannel trousers which, in spite of any argument in their favour, seemed an incongruous article of attire for a woman, stirred a vague and fleeting association in Vereker's mind. He tried to grasp it clearly, but for some moments it was elusive and formless. Then, by some mental trick, the idea of being hatless rose to prominence in his effort at recollection and at once brought up a memory picture hanging by that frail thread of association. It flashed upon him at last with a lively feeling of satisfaction that the elusive association which Miss Cornell's hatless head had stirred in his mind was concerned with the belated statement which George Tapp had made to Inspector Heather. In that statement Tapp had declared that he was in the Manor garden with the gardener's daughter about midnight. She had just left him and he was stealing back to the house when he was startled by the sound of footsteps hurrying in his direction. Tapp, eager not to be seen, promptly sought refuge in a summer-house and let the midnight prowler pass. Though visibility was not good, he saw that the prowler was a man; that he was not wearing a hat, and that he made his way in the direction of the formal garden. With this active recall, Vereker at once asked himself if the person not very clearly seen by Tapp could have been Stella Cornell in her present attire. It was quite possible, and to return to the bungalow she would certainly make for the formal garden and let herself out by the green door in the north wall. With this question there also crossed his mind Mary Lister's account of hearing noises of movement in the bungalow at one o'clock on the same night. Mary Lister, however, had been uncertain whether those footsteps had been Miss Stella's or her father's. At this point in his speculation the motor-cycle overtook him and, slowing down, came to a halt by the footpath.